Hello, welcome back! All three of you. It's good to have you back. Good to see you. It's nine o'clock. Well done for those of you who are here. You have exactly made it on time. So what we want to do this morning is we want to begin with our creed and so forth, as we normally do. But when it comes to the creed, you are going to help us with the creed. So I will give the microphone to someone, and you will say two lines. And then the next person will do two lines and so forth. You understand? Well, we'll get to it in time. But before we get to the creed, Let's go ahead and start with the pledge to the Christian flag. Let's stand to give the pledge to the Christian flag. Everybody standing. I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands, one Savior crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty for all who believe. And the pledge to the Bible. I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God's holy word. I will hide his words in my heart that I might not sin against God. What was it again? I will hide his words in my heart that I might not sin against God. Yes. All right. Let's start again. I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God's holy word. I will make it a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. I will hide its word to my heart, that I might not sin against God. Good. All right. Hebrews 619. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, a hope of short and steadfast. Hebrews 619. Mission statement, SES exists to glorify God in all that we think, all that we say, and all that we do. Now the creed. Dahe, can you give us the first two lines? I, I believe. First two lines. I believe in inspiration of the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, the creation, the creation, The creation of man, the birth, right? After God. All right? Number three. Remember number three? The incarnation. Nice and loud, so we can hear you. The incarnation and virgin birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You know? His identification. All right? His vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind by the shedding of His blood on the cross, the resurrection of His body from the tomb. Remember what comes after that? power to save men from sin, and the new birth through the regeneration by the Holy Spirit. All right, well done. We're going to go ahead and pick up your hymnals now. And to get to the new birth through the regeneration. All right. We're going to sing Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. So take out your handholds and red books. Turn to 2-0-4. 2-0-4, we're going to sing all three verses of Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. Are you okay with the tent up there? Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God. This is my story. This is my song. This is my Savior. This is my song. This is my Savior. Nations are raptured, now burst from the sky. The angels they sing, lead the world on high. In the utter mercy, this praise of mine. This is my story, this is my song. Here is a blessing, Lord, on that day long. This is my song. It is my sing. I am the Lord. Perfect salvation, there is no doubt. I am your Savior, and I'll be your rest. Watching and waiting will be the course. All right, pretty good singing. You know, this summer camp, If there has been one theme of this camp, as we have looked at the Creed, as we have looked at Hebrews 11, as we've seen Christ's prayer, there has been this theme that we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to trust His word. We need to live by His word. because every word in God's Word is true. And so, we've seen men of faith, women of faith, who trusted Jesus Christ. We have seen those who have sought to please God, as they trusted Him. We know, we saw from Hebrews 11.3 that without faith, It is impossible to please God. All right, let's go ahead and stand up and we'll have a sword drill. We've got one passage today that we're going to spend the entire time in. Swords out. Everyone get your Bibles. I want to see those Bibles out. Swords out. Get out your Bibles. That's it. Noah, I see there's a Bible up there on the first front row there. All right, everybody ready? Quickly, come on. I have to work on making sure we bring the Bible every time. All right, stand up. Swords ready? Swords drawn? And get ready. Count of three. Draw your swords. Two. Joshua, 22. Three, two, one. Draw your swords. Joshua, 22. Joshua, 22. All right. And when you Have your sword drawn. Lift your hand up like you've got a sword up there. OK? OK. I see Yoho has his. I see Brian has his. Joshua, remember it's the sixth book. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua. And you see up here on the board, Joshua chapter 22. So I'm going to ask, let's see. Mr. Athrey, can we get the front line off maybe? All right, so what we're going to do, I'm going to summarize the first nine verses. In Joshua 22, we just sang blessed assurance. And what we see, what that means is I trust, I believe God's word is true. God promised to save me if I believe in his son Jesus Christ. I believed in Jesus. I am his. And so what we see in the Bible is that when God makes a promise, what does he do? Does God ever forget what he said? I know I sometimes forget the things I say. Sometimes I forget to do the things that I'm supposed to do. But God never forgets. And so as we come here to the book of Joshua, the people of Israel, this nation, remember they had grown up in Egypt. Jacob and his family of 70, 75, were there in Egypt. 400 years passed and boom! God kept his promise. that Abram's descendants would be a whole, whole bunch. There would be many, many, many children. And so there were some 2 million soldiers and probably even more, or 600,000 soldiers, so probably about 2 million people. That's a lot of people, isn't it? So God promised a descendants, many descendants. He promised land. He promised to be a blessing and to bless God's people. So now God's people are now many descendants. They're in the promised land. And guess what? As we read Joshua 22 verses 1 through 9, we find out there was an amazing success. Good job, Joshua. Joshua goes in, takes the country. He goes in and he wins battle after battle after battle. God gives his people his promised land. And so what we see is that there comes a time when Joshua says, OK, you, you, you, two tribes and a half tribe, all your family is on the other side of the river. You promised to go with me. and fight and take the land. You kept your promise. Bye bye. Go home to your wife, go home to your children, give them a big kiss, you know, and you can even take a bunch of treasure too. And so you see that there in Joshua 22. And so we see there verse, in verse four it says, Now the Lord your God has given rest to your brethren as he promised them. God has given us, we won the battles, we took the land, we got it. Now therefore return, go to your tents, go home, go see your wife, go see your kids, and to the land of your possession, which Moses, a servant of the Lord, gave you on the other side of the Jordan. However, When you go home, pay attention. When you go home, remember. Remember this. Verse 5, take careful heed to the commandment and the law which Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you. What's Moses' commandment? What's the most important one? Verse five says, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways. So love God, obey God, keep his commandments, hold fast to him, serve him with all your heart and soul. So Joshua blesses him, verse six, and says, bye-bye, go home. Bye, Joshua, see you, buddy, it was fun fighting for you and with you on your, you know, and then go home. But so they return home, the soldiers return home. And so we see here, God does give peace to his people. When God gives the victory, God gives peace, this is great. God has kept his promise. There will be a day when all our battles are done. It won't be in this life. It will be when we're in heaven. But there are some times when we have rest. respite, a time to take a nap, to go to church on Sunday. And so we enjoy those times of peace, right? God gives victory. God keeps his promises. We can count on that. But notice, not only is peace good, we have these folks going home. Now then, I'm going to pick up at verse 10. Verse 10. Dahin, do you have your Bible there? Can you read verse 10 for us, really nice and loud for us? Give me your microphone so we can hear you. Read verse 10. Joshua 22, verse 10. to the land of Canaan. And so we've got three groups of people that are there. We've got the children, are you there in verse 10? The children of Reuben, number one. Number two, the children of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh built. What did they do there? Do you see what it says there in verse 10? What did they do? These three. They built an imposing altar there by the side of the door. An altar. What are altars for? Does anyone know what an altar is for? We sometimes talk about a family altar, where mom and dad and all the children get together to read the Bible and pray. Here was a place to worship God, or a place to worship. You know, can you read verse 11 for me? Use the microphone so we can hear you. Nice and loud. Verse 11. 22-11. The children of Israel are similar to you, saying, Behold, the children of Sodom and Gomorrah, the children of Gath and the apostles. I'm going to ask him a question. All right, so picture what's going on. We have these tribes, two and a half tribes. What have they done? You just read it? I just told you. What did they do? They built what? They built an altar. An altar is a place to worship. Now then, You would think this is a good thing, right? We've had this amazing success. We're going home We're building an altar and so they build a huge altar And all the rest of Israel the other tribes They say hey Did you hear what they did? Do you know what those two tribes, two and a half tribes did? Do you know what Gad and Manasseh, do you know what they did? They built something. They built an altar. And so here we have, they're building an altar and Israel hears about it. And we know we need to worship God the right way. We need to make sure that we worship only God and so the people of Israel are saying Is this Is this something That is good or is this something that we think what we're afraid we're afraid it might be something bad Instead of being an altar to the true and living God it might be something Not so good. It might be something wicked We need to be careful. Watch out. All right Sabine I'm going to ask you to read verse 12 now I'll give you the microphone here. Read it out, nice and loud, verse 12 for us. What is it that the children of Israel need? Listen carefully. What? They build an altar and the rest of Israel says, you're building an altar? Let's get together. Everyone come together. Come on, everyone. We're going over there to fight. Get the soldiers together. Right? That's what it says. Right? Is that what it says to me? They get in an army? To go to war. Going to war is not a friendly thing, right? Do you like it when people go to war against you? Uh-oh. And so here, in verse 12, we have the people of Israel. Remember, an altar means worship. And we need to worship the right way. We need to worship the right one. We need to worship God alone. And the people of Israel are saying, maybe this isn't for God. Maybe this isn't being done the right way. So, if you're going to do the wrong thing, if you're going to Basically, betray Israel, betray Israel's God, we're not going to put up with that. We're not going to put up with that kind of nonsense. And so we see here, we have an army gathered. Three A's so far, right? Amazing success, peace. We have an altar built. And so accountability. And then we, so we have the army gathered for accountability. We're going to take care of this. We're going to make sure these people are not leaving God. They're not betraying our people. We're going to do right. Even if it's painful because this is family. This is the same nation. This is basically If things go to the next step if they go to war we have civil war, right? That's how important this is But they want to make sure notice that love means you look after others and The most important thing for any one of us is to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts all of our souls all of our strength we need to trust in God And if there's anything that takes us takes away our love from God if we worship any other guy We are in a big mess We are in big trouble Because God is ultimately who matters most. Your mom is important. Your dad is important. Your brother and sister. I hope you love all of these people. But you need to love God most. You need to worship only God. And so love means you look after others. And so the army comes. They're ready to fight. We continue on down to the verse 22 and what they're saying is, all right, we're ready to fight. We've got the army ready to go to war. But, okay, before they, before, you know, Evan comes out with his sword, and Yuho comes out with his bows and arrows, and all these people start to fight, they do one thing first, and this was very wise. Before they start to fight, They make sure there's a reason to fight. Because that altar might not be for a bad reason. It might be something good. And so, let's see. Lyle, can you read verse 13 for us? Nice and loud. Need that microphone again. That's hard. Well, you closed your mouth then. All right, hey, can you read while she's looking? Judgment 2213. And the children of Jerusalem, and the house of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of Zerubbabel, were preached to the children of Jerusalem, to the children of Dan, And not only is there Phineas, Phineas has ten buddies, right? One for each tribe. Verse 14 said, With him ten rulers, one ruler for each from the chief house of every tribe of Israel, and each one was the head of his house of his father among the divisions of Israel. And so basically, we have one from each tribe. We have Phineas, and they're going to have a powwow. They're going to have a meeting. They're going to find out what has happened. And so they say, can you read verse 16 for us, Lyle? 16, 1-6. Hope. Congregation. Treachery. And so what they're saying is, what do you think you're doing? Are you turning your back on God? Are you fighting God? Look at all the times in our past when we messed up. And he goes on and goes through the history. We messed up here, and ow, that hurt. We did all these bad things and God righteously said, OK, I'm not going to take that. Stop. All right, so you're doing this bad stuff. Stop. And so here there is this love for these people and a love even more for God that does require looking after these people. But notice. It doesn't stop here because Phineas says, what are you doing? And then he waits. He listens to the answer. So let's see what the answer is. In verses 21 through 29. All right. And so we've got the different groups. Verse 21, they say, Read for us verse 22. OM HUNG HUNG HUNG HUNG HUNG HUNG Don't spare. What are they saying? Okay. Guys, God is watching. If I'm doing something against God, kill us. Do not spare. I want to be on God's side. I don't want to be against God. And so you see there, verse 22 says, look, here is almighty God who is so powerful. He knows our hearts. He knows why we did this. I didn't do this against God. I did this for God. I didn't do this to rebel against God, to turn on God. I did this because I love Him. And there's more of an explanation here. So we are now in verse 23. If we have built, right? We built this altar, right? We saw that in verses 10 and 11. If we built ourselves an altar to turn from following the way, the Lord, if we did this to go away from God, God's over here, we're going this way. If we did it for this reason, or to even to offer a sacrifice that is not done the right way, What does it say? Verse 24, let the Lord himself require it. God knows our heart. God knows what we meant. We want to do right. We want to please God. See, already the rest of Israel have misjudged. They were wrong. They had good motives. They wanted to see that God was worshiped They wanted to see that people were being loyal to God But they were wrong. They did not understand That this this altar was not To worship another God this work altar was not to worship God the wrong way. No Verse 24 Dahei, can you have your Bible open? Can you read verse 24 for us, nice and loud? Nice and loud. The reason we made this altar, we're over here. Do you see the aisle there? Pastor Wagner's over there all by himself. All of us are on this side of the water. And they're saying, you know what? We did this. All of you guys are over there. There are 10 tribes over there. There's a little guy over here, all by himself, and you guys. I go, huh? You're not part of us. We are Israel's. We belong to God. You're over the bridge. Not at Grandma's house, but you're over there. You're not part of us. You're over there. You must not worship our God. And so they said, look, we built this altar not to worship God. Wrong. Not because we hate God or want to fight God or worship God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. We built this altar to say, we are one. We are one nation. We belong to God, too. So when you see this altar, don't say we're on our own, say you're ours, you're family, you worship our God too. That is why we did this. Come on over here, brother. Yeah, we're all one family. Welcome. See, they had to... Their wives, their kids were, they couldn't come back like the pastor Roger did, because that's where their animals, their food, their chicken. And so they were saying, look, we belong to you. You belong to us. Don't forget, we are family. We belong to God. And so there might come a time, verse 24, when you say, You don't belong to God. We belong to God. Verse 25 says, Look, the Lord has made this river. Here's the Jordan River, and there's water. I mean, you guys know about the Han River. They closed their bridge just a few days ago because there was so much water. So people couldn't get across, right? And we're worried that you'll say something like, you have no part in the Lord. Your descendants, you guys, right, say, we're outsiders. We don't belong to you. We made that altar so that you will remember we are family. We all belong to God. And so look at number four here. Here we have answers given. They explain. No, we're not fighting God. We're for God. No, we're not against you. We are for you. Do you see how important this is? Melvin, what do you think these guys are doing? You're just making excuses. Die! Is that what they did? Do you want to know the story? What happens next? Do we just wipe out these tribes? What happens? Is this a good answer? Is this a good explanation? Are they finding God? They're not finding God. Do they love God? Yes, they do. Are they trying to worship God the wrong way? No, they're not. They want to say we are together, not apart. Right? And so the people of Israel go, hmmm. Right? Let me drop down to verse 30. Now, remember who was the guy who represented everybody? The big tribes? We have Phineas, verse 30. We have the priests, we have the rulers. And so they're listening to this explanation, verse 30. Just like David's very careful listening, right? Careful listening. All right, they listen, and notice, Evan, what are the last three words of verse 30? The last three words. Verse 30, the last three words. Huh? What? Let's try that again. What are the last three words there? What? It? Not replaced. It pleased them. That means they were happy. Right? Now look at verse 31. We have Phineas saying to God, saying to Reuben, Gad, Manasseh. What do they say? They say... Everybody, can you see the screen up here? Can you read the blue here? This day, can you read it with me? One, two, three. This day we perceive, that means we understand. This day we perceive that the Lord is with us. Why is God with us? How do we understand that? Well, because you have not committed trespass against the Lord. In other words, what are the people saying here? You are right. You are not trying to do something wrong. We understand. These were reasonable people. They were zealous for God. Praise God. They wanted to see God's holiness protected. They wanted to see worship of the true God. The people said, okay, we worship God. We're doing it the right way. And they say, okay, wonderful. Praise the Lord. Notice the next line there. Now ye have delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the Lord. In other words, we don't have to fight. We don't have to experience God's judgment because God judges those who turn their backs on Him. Praise God, you're doing what's right. You're a blessing. We are a blessing to one another. So what happens they return from the children's they go home everyone goes back to their own home Notice verse 33 This thing Pleased the children of Israel the children of Israel bless God Praise Him praise Him all ye little children God is love, right? We're all together. We're all on the same side. We're all family. We're one nation under God. They blessed God. They did not intend to go up against him in battle. There's not going to be war. There's not going to be battle. There is going to be peace. Because these people were reasoning. They listened. And they saw that their brothers were not wrong. How about the other side, the people on the other side of the river? So we've got the people that had the army first. That's verse 33. How about the other guys that had an army come up against them? What did they say? Verse 34. The children of Reuben, the children of Ed, called the altar Ed. Okay. They called the altar Ed. Why? Because it is a witness. Between us that the Lord is The Lord is God the Lord is our God now God is what I want you to learn from this God desires for his people to worship him alone God desires for his people to worship him the right way and God desires for if that is not done For you to do what the Israel did go and tell people when they're home fight for right but God also desires for God's people to be at peace with one another If someone is doing the right thing and you attack them you're wrong and And if you find out that you wrongly attacked someone, make peace with them. If you are attacked because you are doing right, this can happen. It sometimes does. If sometimes you have to do what is right and somebody says, you are wrong. Be willing be able to say this is what the Bible says this is what I will do and ultimately God himself will be the peace. Let's pray Father we thank you for this day. We thank you for the your word There are so many lessons in this one chapter we see your commitment to yourself your commitment to the worship of yourself and and your commitment, Father, to do things justly and rightly, to be reasonable and to seek peace between Christians, between those who love you. Lord, we pray that your people would love one another. Your Son, Jesus Christ, said that all men would know that we are your disciples because we love one another. Help us to love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ in Jesus name. Amen All right in a few minutes Stacy